...[Jim Albaugh] ticked off a list of broad national problems that transcend Boeing:

 Brain drain of talented immigrants:...."Now, the best and brightest come to the United States, get trained, and leave, and go back and compete against us."

 Defense cuts: "There is no industrial base policy in the Department of Defense other than market forces," he said. "Right now, the Boeing Company is the only company in the United States that has a design team working on a new airplane. There are no [all-new] airplanes being developed for the Department of Defense probably for the first time in 100 years."

 Competition from China: "The law of large numbers would dictate that they are going to have more smart people than we are going to have. And their government has identified aerospace as an industry that they've targeted,".....

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited China in January, the Chinese military made a very public test flight of its previously secret J-20 Stealth fighter.

"A lot of people saw that as a military threat," Albaugh said. "I didn't. I saw it more as an economic threat. They will sell that airplane around the world and will take away a lot of the market that's been enjoyed by U.S. defense contractors."

 NASA cuts and private space ventures: "They are trying to commercialize space. ... Getting the reliability requires a lot of redundancy, which requires a lot of cost," Albaugh said. "I think it's going to be a money pit for a lot of them."

He lamented the U.S. government's withdrawal from space exploration as the space-shuttle program winds down: "My prediction is that the Chinese will walk on the moon before we launch an American into orbit again in a U.S. spacecraft."

The Chinese are discovering Capitalism while our leaders are taking us into the dark ages of Socialism through the exploitation of our education system and robbery of our citizens in order to redistribute the wealth into a black hole. Unions do not dictate China’s economic policies as they do her. They also are not going bankrupt.

...[Jim Albaugh] ticked off a list of broad national problems that transcend Boeing:  Brain drain of talented immigrants:...."Now, the best and brightest come to the United States, get trained, and leave, and go back and compete against us."

This is simply the biggest pile of horse manure that has ever been put in front of the American Public. I'm getting sick and tired of seeing many in the technology sector complaining about brain drain. The only brains that are draining are their own.

We don't need these huge pools of talented immigrants. These companies want cheap labor, plain and simple. They are laying off talented American and hiring cheap pools of immigrants. This is despicable. It's the biggest myth around that we don't have enough American to fill these jobs. Total Garbage. And a huge amount of national security secrets go out the door with these huge pool of immigrant engineers and scientists. The Chinese are the absolute worst at this. You cannot go for a month without reading about a case of Chinese espionage committed by one of these immigrants Albaugh loves so much. This Albaugh fellow is one of a new class of person I now call post-American.

Similar to the old Soviet-style communism, but much wider effects because more money is generated for them to redistribute.

I would disagree here. To me the Chinese Government has morphed into fascism, they just kept the Commie logo for obvious reason. The lefty's that run out corps now would have never sold us out to fascists, but to good commies of course. The Chinese are not stupid.

8
posted on 06/13/2011 3:03:52 AM PDT
by central_va
( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)

We need to restrict H1-b’s now! We are undercutting out future, can’t anyone see that but you and I? I am anti-union as the next FReeper but clearly engineers are the only group of professionals that actually need protection. It is a matter of national security.

9
posted on 06/13/2011 3:17:13 AM PDT
by central_va
( I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)

We need to restrict H1-bs now! We are undercutting out future, cant anyone see that but you and I? I am anti-union as the next FReeper but clearly engineers are the only group of professionals that actually need protection. It is a matter of national security.

Actually there are a growing number of people who are aware of this problem. I've worked in the technology sector for top companies and I've worked with many of these people and they are so overrated that it's pathetic. It's also an extreme irritation to have to listen to people all day long who butcher the English Language. Very frustrating.

Look we have the largest number of Colleges in the world. We have the Largest Number of Engineering Schools in the world. All we have to do is use the Americans who are already here. It's madness that we bring in all these H1-B Visas. Of course there are a very few exceptions. If we find a Werner Von Braun or someone like him we can bring them in, but on average, these H1-B guys are mediocre at best. And I've known dozens of them and they are far inferior to the Americans I went to school with at an American University.

There is no one whose a** we can’t kick if we quit trying to commit national suicide. This, however, won’t always be true it we get too far away from what our strengths are.

People need to remember why we have locks on our doors. Unfortunately we don’t live in an altruistic world, and others will take what we have if we let them. I trust us, as a nation, to be fair and charitable to the world. I don’t trust the world to be that way toward us. If we fall, they won’t pick us up.

why do i say congress? i know for a fact that this exact scenario was laid out in 1998 when the H1-b bill was passed. it was laid out to members of 5 different congressional offices by at least one person.

me

they knew this was coming.
they knew the obvious impact.
they didn’t care and continue to work against the best interests of Americans.

why is it we’re not able to hold them liable for damages done? since when did they become above the law?

14
posted on 06/13/2011 3:59:14 AM PDT
by sten
(fighting tyranny never goes out of style)

And for posters lamenting the education of foreigners (and some staying here), well, look at our institutions of higher learning who love to rake in that foreign education money. Time was these foreigners stayed because the USA had a good program but now they go home because the President and his Science and Technology Adviser, John Holdren (look this guy up), want to level the playing field (and that can only suit the socialists in academic circles that take monthly junkets to foreign countries for endless cycles of meetings).

I work for a very large outsourcing company. We just staffed a prominent US company with 100 programmers, tech support in addition to moving the help desk and testing center off shore.

The company doesn’t have to pick up the benefits for 100 + people, it doesn’t have to pay salaries to 100 + people. it minimized it’s risk profile and it’s IT department can now run 24x7 to support development efforts.

It’s not that they can’t find employees. It’s the savings of over $750,000 a year in costs that made it an attractive deal. And they have a responsibility the stockholder and to their customers.

It’s not that good people are hard to find. It’s that good people, facilities to staff them and insure them are expensive.

The bad side of obamacare might save jobs and that is by companies dropping insurance, it becomes cheaper to hire people. Employees would have to find their own health care. I am not endorsing it, just giving an observation. Question is, how do you make that insurance cheap enough for individuals to buy? I pay 20% of what I would pay if I had to buy it own my own. And that is with less benefits at higher deductibles.

16
posted on 06/13/2011 4:19:06 AM PDT
by EQAndyBuzz
(Sarah Palin, the only candidate to be vetted by the NY Times, the Washington Post and NBC.)

Engineering pay for the most part is terrible. Engineering, especially aerospace engineering, is one of the most difficult, technically challenging,time consuming professions there are. But the pay is substantially less than other professional occupations like doctor or lawyer. Up the pay and you'll have no problem attracting engineers.

Commercial start-ups are people like Elon Musk who is a heavy campaign contributor and fundraiser for Obama and democrats. It’s crony-capitalism and the U.S. is going to left grounded while foreign countries move out and control that arena.

But then again that’s just what the Science and Technology Adviser for Obama wants.

Those ready to attack legacy companies that have worked for NASA are just the new guys on the block who want their turn at the trough.

But the pay is substantially less than other professional occupations like doctor or lawyer.

The educational requirements for engineers to enter that profession is nowhere near that of doctors and even lawyers. An engineer can begin working after four years of college; lawyers seven and doctors eight plus various lengths of time in residency.

I absolutely agree with you, and you are spot on about the academic mind-set.

It's ludicrous to believe that those at the academy generally have any better ideas or abilities to move the nation and the world forward than other individuals in society do. I say this from the perspective of someone who spent 18 years after high school attaining and advancing my education and training in my profession.

We have made celebrities of politicians, and oracles of those in academia. Big, big mistake. There are smart people with great ideas in every walk of life, and people with limited vision and bad ideas peppered throughout academia and government.

There needs to be a revolution in education that provides a real leveling of the playing field, eradicates the elite designations, and motivates a wider spectrum of people to achieve. Online education, with national standards that can be tested for and certified, is one way to get beyond the 40-60K / year costs that many students are getting soaked for. If someone who self-educates online scores as well or higher than someone who spent 4 years and a fortune at Harvard, so be it.

This Albaugh fellow is one of a new class of person I now call post-American.

Far more accurate than you might realize. Jim Albaugh couldn't care less about what happens to the US military industrial base, nor I suspect the long-term technological superiority of the US, as long as he gets his cut of the action along the way. His sole focus is to move into the big chair in Chicago once the board sends McNerny packing. Further, JFA is now in charge of the commercial aircraft business at Boeing. If he's so worried about the Chinese, one has to wonder why he has now accelerated the aircraft manufacturing technology-sharing partnership with the Chinese gov't that Alan Mullaly fought against for so long??

Remember all the cost savings from firingrightsizingoutsourcing offshoring all those jobs belonging to middle-aged white males?

Guess what.

They went and told their kids, don't bother with science or technology: you'll have to study too hard in school for maybe a ten-year career, having to retire when you're forty, forty-five, tops.

And the Universities took the hint and accepted mainly womyn into Greivance Studies programs; allowing mainly foreigners into the STEM classes in the sacred name of "Diversity." White males need not apply.

You and the entire cadre of C-level executives starting from the mid-eighties should be hung and your families' wealth confiscated. Your wives and children should be sentenced to begging scraps for a living.

It's what you did to an entire generation of white male US citizens.

And now you have the nerve to look surprised.

Cheers!

28
posted on 06/13/2011 5:56:52 AM PDT
by grey_whiskers
(The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)

The educational requirements for engineers to enter that profession is nowhere near that of doctors and even lawyers. An engineer can begin working after four years of college; lawyers seven and doctors eight plus various lengths of time in residency.

My undergrad degree is in Electrical Engineering (1968) and after a few years working as an EE, I went back to school and became a lawyer, JD in 1976.

Engineering undergrad degrees at the time required about 20% more credit hours than for other majors, so it was really a five year program crammed into four years.

I personally found law school easier than master's level EE classes.

I took a 25% pay cut, by the way, between my last paycheck as an EE and my first one as a newly minted lawyer. However, after a few years of hard work, my income as a telecommunications lawyer was substantially more than it would have been had I remained in engineering.

You're right, they're not comparable. The technical competency required for engineering exceeds those other fields. I've known so many engineers who've quit and gone into less time consuming areas like law with the secondary benefit of making considerably more.

While I agree that some of what he says is BS - like no defense company building a new airplane. Ever heard of X craft? Lockheed, Northrup, etc are both also working on X craft projects.

However - being in the technology sector my whole life and living in Silicon Valley I can say with certainty that cutting off immigration for access to our University’s is cutting off our own heads.

Here are some empirical facts for you.

1) In Silicon Valley, roughly 80% of all engineers are foreign born.
2) The percentage of American graduating seniors entering STEM majors is alarmingly low. Of those that do - likely the majority are first generation Americans whose parents immigrated here!

With these two points in mind - why does it make sense to shut down the only really solid source of brain power we’ve got in this country.

This isn’t to say I support H1B programs - that is a DIFFERENT discussion. However, not supporting foreign student access to our universities would sign our own death warrants. It would deny our own engineering companies access to the best and brightest ALONG with starving our universities of funds supplied by these students.

What we NEED is a vibrant economy to keep those graduating STEM majors in this country. If opportunities look better at home than here, then naturally they are going to migrate back to where the jobs are.

You need to separate Mr. Musk’s economic activities from his political beliefs. The simple fact is that he is building a better mouse trap at a lower price. He has attracted government funding because he is doing something that up until now only governments have done, and doing it better!

Space-X has rewritten the book on how you do R&D into construction/launching a rocket. He is also doing it with a large chunk of his own money on the line. Something you don’t see Lockheed or Boeing doing in the Government arena.

Whatever, but the disparity in the educational requirements to become a professional engineer compared to MDs and attorneys is great, and that has been and will be reflected in the compensation earned in each field.

Engineering is much more comparable to architecture and CPA work.

And there are plenty of attorneys and doctors and CPAs and others who’d be surprised to learn they work so much less than engineers (because it isn’t true).

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